I copied this idea from another forum member. Super easy to construct. Bought the Red LEDs and blue from Steve's LEDS per Turbos recommendation, and heat sinks from Turbo. Scratched the mesh up a bit but no mortar, and added a 2x2" seed screen from my dump bucket scrubber. The attached pictures are from 8 days of growth. after 24 hours the screen is already completely covered back up with algae. Scrubber is working like a champ. Last picture is a comparison of the first weeks growth of my DIY vertical compared with a weeks worth of my old Dump buckets style. Almost the same output after week #1!
Fantastic comparison, thank you for sharing! Remind me, what are the dims of the waterfall and the dims of the dump bucket? IIRC that Inland Aquatics dump-bucket scrubber was 8x12?
The dump bucket style screen is a 9 x 20, although I would say I don't have algae growing on the last 3" of it. Probably a 10" x 17" area of growth. I cut the side too narrow so I have about 1" all the way down the side that grows to the bucket itself I must scrape off each week. the reason I'm missing 3" of growth on the end is that is the length of the mars aqua I put above it. It is like a line in the sand where algae quits growing well at the edge of light. Pretty amazing how much lighting is required for algae to grow, at least GHA. the GHA grows over the top of the red turf alga seed screen within 36 hours each week. Ive already completely coated the white mesh again within 24 hours of the vertical, for being less than two weeks old it has exceeded my expectations compared to other DIY ATS posts I have seen. I imagine that has to do with the seed screen though. I scraped it pretty rigoursly as well when I cleaned it as I had the seed screen to replenish if needed and a lot of the algae was difficult to remove. I removed the seed screen as well from the vertical before putting it back into service. While yes this is going to work well, I still would rather have a professional model that you make. Algae goes out the drain pipe into the tank if I don't use a sock, and I'm guessing this is after maybe 2-3 days. I made a false bottom but apparently it is getting around that, and I also can't look inside of the box to see what is going on very well due to the PVC construction. Not sure of anyway to keep algae from growing into the groove I cut in the PVC either when using regular PVC pipe. I will definitely be looking forward to when my time on the waiting list arrives so I can upgrade to a more well built professional unit. At this time I plan on continuing to use both scrubbers until I get yours in and it is established. I have some very healthy fish in the tank and since my phosphates have lowered dramatically once they started growing GHA Ive added some rescue frags from Inland right before they closed. Very inexpensive stuff that won't bother me if it doesn't make it. But so far seems to be flourishing. My DIY scrubber screen I think is 6X7" double sided and the dump bucket is 9x17 single sided. Im feeding a total of around 6 cubes a day to the fish. Not sure where this puts me if I could be feeding more or if I am over doing it?
I have taken weekly pictures since I started this back mid january, Seems like it has been so much longer than a month. The last two weeks the screen on the vertical has turned a little brown, almost like mud, and the filter sock at the bottom of it has gotten very brown and saturated each week as well, I just thought that I have only been changing the filter sock weekly for the last two weeks where as before I was changing it twice or more a week. Also I'm not sure if the flow is as good now as I haven't been removing the screen for over two weeks either, I've just been scraping as close to the gap as possible. Anyhow it still doesn't explain in my mind why the alga looks muddy instead of bright green like I was getting initially. My levels have plummeted as far as phosphates, everything else was good from the get go upon starting the tank. I don't have the ultra low checker but my Hana phosphate checker has shown a drop from .80 phosphates back mid January to .1 now. Not sure if It reads lower accurately or if I should get the Ultra low reading phosphate tester. This is still at half power on the vertical, do you think it is time to change the LED's to full power?
I would also really like to discontinue the use of the dump bucket style, but both scrubbers produce about the same amount of algae each week. What are your recommendations for switching to just the vertical?
As your water chemistry changes, the growth can definitely change. That might be part of it. Having both scrubbers going probably had a lot to do with a fast nutrient drop. Cleaning the slot/screen interface regularly is important. This is by far the biggest advantage of the light/spray blockers, that was one of the biggest improvements that I found. Initially, the slot is clean and there’s no issue but as the algae takes hold, it will sort of “seed” on the slot and the bottom edge of the pipe and this will reduce flow quite a lot, and quickly after cleaning. So if you combined reduced nutrients and flow, while leaving the lighting alone, you’ll likely start to see some “over lighting” effects. So I wouldn’t increase intensity unless you do some light blocking at the slot/screen junction.
I have recently got Bryopsis growing on one of my live rocks, someone has suggested dosing with Glucanozole but from what I have read it will kill GHA. Any suggestions on how I can treat this and not kill my turf scrubber?
You can put the screen in a bucket of tank water and the algae will survive for weeks. Do a harvest before you put in the bucket, but leave at least 1/2 of the algae still attached. If you put a light on there for an hours or two a day, could probably keep it alive for quite a while longer
